


The Red Flush of New Feeling

by cricket_aria



Category: Far Cry 4
Genre: Character A tilting character B's chin up with the tip of any kind of weapon; I'm not picky, Fighting - One character gets off on watching the other one fight, M/M, soulbond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:34:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23010298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/pseuds/cricket_aria
Summary: There are traditions in Kyrat that Ajay doesn't know until he's stumbled his way through one.
Relationships: Ajay Ghale/Pagan Min
Comments: 4
Kudos: 140
Collections: Writing Rainbow Red





	The Red Flush of New Feeling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [psychomachia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychomachia/gifts).



> Hopefully you are still also interested in the "catching someone's thrown knife leads to a soulbond" freeform from back in Die Like Fen 2, because I loved it back then but didn't have time to write it. After I verified that you were the same person who'd asked for it I went "Okay, that plot bunny's finally getting written with a few of the current freeforms mixed in." :-)

Ajay never would have expected it the first time he was tossed into the pit, but he’d ended up liking the arena. He didn’t have to worry about making the best decisions for the country, he didn’t have to brace himself for how the others might judge him, he just had to fight and survive and not think about anything else. It was simple in a way nothing else in his life still was, easy in a way he should probably find concerning considering how many people it involved killing, a break from the rest of the world.

He was unhappily aware that he might never be able to fit back into his own life again, if deathmatches had become a way for him to unwind. He tried not to think about it too much.

This round had taken a turn towards the bizarre, his opponents running in with fake ears and tails stuck on them, faces painted up like the local wildlife, one or two actual animals periodically being released between them. He wondered what Noore would have thought if she could have seen it; would she have been insulted at her work being turned into a farce when those left behind got too lazy to refill the menagerie, or glad that someone with less to lose had taken the chance to make a joke of it?

If that was even the intention. Ridiculous though it all seemed to him, the crowds seemed to eat it up just as much as they did everything else that happened there. If anything the cheering seemed even more boisterous than usual when he dug his blade out of the last real tiger and stood at last as the night’s victor. Ajay stared up at the crowd in surprise, trying to judge whether they were actually seriously into watching furries getting slaughtered, and that was when he saw him.

Pagan Min himself, sitting right in the front row staring back down at him with rapt attention. 

Ajay had heard the rumors that Pagan sometimes left his seclusion to sneak down to the arena in disguise. He’d kind of thought that if it were true the disguise would be something that would actually work for more than two seconds on anyone who’d ever met him. Not just wearing something that wasn’t pink and throwing on a hat to cover his distinctive hair.

He would have assumed he’d at least wear a pair of shades, or even just reading glasses. Unmasked the way they were Ajay would know those eyes anywhere.

He fingered the gun that he’d swiped off one of his opponents, and even with the distance between them could see Pagan’s eyebrows raise, smile growing wider with amused interest. He could have immediately dropped behind the cover of the wall around the stadium seats where Ajay would be unable to hit him, but instead he leaned in a little closer.

All it would take was one pull of a trigger and Ajay could end all… well, most… okay, at least _a few_ of Kyrat’s problems then and there. The only issue was that when it came down to it he didn’t actually want to see Pagan dead. He was the only adult in the whole godforsaken country who was consistently friendly towards him no matter how often he went against him—Rabi Ray Rana was way too obsessed with poop to be considered an adult—and Ajay didn’t want to lose that. 

No matter how fucked up it showed that his priorities had become, if he would let a murderous dictator live and continue his regime just because he was nice to him in his own bizarre way.

He let his hand drift away from the gun, and instead plucked a throwing knife from his sleeve and chucked it at Pagan with lazy precision. Even if it hit it wouldn’t do enough damage to kill him from such a distance unless Pagan got incredibly unlucky with what bit of himself it pierced, and Ajay really didn’t think that it would. It was a way of acknowledging him more than anything, and he wasn’t surprised or disappointed when Pagan caught it easily out of the air.

But he was startled when the whole arena went suddenly hushed in reaction, all eyes darting between the two of them. And by the rush of emotion that flooded through him for no good reason a second later, another level of surprise followed by a spark of startled pleasure. And still more when, just as he was starting to worry that everyone had recognized Pagan for who he was when the knife drew their attention to him and they were about to turn on him in response, the cheers started up again more joyous than ever. 

_What the hell just happened?_ was all Ajay could wonder as he watched Pagan watching him, Ajay’s own knife now spinning easily between his fingers.

* * *

Ajay felt weird and off-kilter after leaving the arena, enough so that at first he wondered whether someone had somehow drugged him again until it just didn’t wear off. Physically he was just fine, or at least as fine as he could expect to be after a round in the arena, but emotionally he felt strangely split. On the surface level there was nothing really unusual, a lot of confusion but in Kyrat that did _not_ count as unusual. A little wary, because he always had to be, and still coming down from the adrenaline rush of the arena, nothing unexpected.

But beneath that he could still feel that inexplicable pleasure that had been in him ever since the end of the fight… right up until it was replaced by a sudden burst of murderous rage that came out of nowhere and almost startled Ajay into veering the buzzer he was flying into the side of a mountain. There was nothing at all to cause it, no one on the ground firing at him, not even any of Kyrat’s horrible eagles swooping down at him, just the intense feeling that _someone_ needed to die that vanished again as quickly as it came in a quick burst of satisfaction.

The weirdest thing about that one was that, in spite of the number of people he’d killed since coming to Kyrat, that _wasn’t_ something he generally felt. Wasn’t something he’d even let himself feel, because if he let anything in Kyrat get under his skin that badly it felt like as if he really would be losing himself to it. His mom would never rest easy if she knew that was the result of her wish to have her ashes interred wherever the hell Lakshmana was. The times when he was badly swarmed by enemies, when a burst of anger might actually give him the rush he needed to see out the fight, he usually just felt panicked and focused on scrambling up to somewhere out of the way enough that he could hunker down to patch up his wounds without anyone getting a bead on him. When it wasn’t that bad and he was sure he could handle things then there was no point in getting that worked up about it. For all that he’d let himself get tangled up in it, the battle for Kyrati independence wasn’t really _his_ fight, and he’d be just as happy to let Pagan’s men live if they’d only retreat (though given what had happened the first time he’d met Pagan he could imagine that disengaging from a fight might be a death sentence on its own). That sort of rage had no place inside him, yet there it was.

His moods continued to be split like that, fine on a surface level then doing all sorts of strange things somewhere deep inside. Usually it seemed completely detached from whatever was actually happening around him, but not always. At one point he almost took a bad fall climbing a bell tower and his own shock and fear as he dangled from the plank he’d just barely managed to snag was almost overwhelmed by a separate burst of terror that calmed with his heart and replaced with something like a worried curiosity. Not really understanding why himself he closed his eyes after dragging himself back onto the walkway and let himself really focus on his own relief that he was fine.

It was almost a week later that he finally got an answer, when he made his way back to Banapur for the first time in a while only to almost immediately be hauled into an empty house by Bhadra. She whirled on him as soon as she’d shut the door with a broad smile that made her look for once like the young girl she really was, beneath the burdens of being a religious figure. “Ajay, why didn’t you tell anyone? It’s so romantic, and I had to hear about it from a Sherpa instead of from you?”

“Romantic? I’m not sure what you’re getting at here, Bhadra,” he told her, raising his hands placatingly at her responding pout. 

“Your knife, Ajay! The arena! In front of _so_ many people…” her smile faltered the tiniest bit when she saw no dawning comprehension on his face. “It’s the most romantic gesture imaginable, Ajay. They show absolute trust in staying still as you throw an attack, believing that you will not throw it too hard or fast or outside of where they expect it to fly to catch it. You show absolute faith in their abilities, that they’ll be able to snatch it from the air without harm. It’s said that when one person catches the knife another throws to them then that faith in each other will bind their souls forever.”

Ajay laughed disbelievingly, _wanting_ to disbelieve even as things suddenly seemed to fit so neatly. “I throw knives pretty often, Bhadra. I don’t think every enemy who might have spotted one coming their way with the reflexes to snag it ended up becoming a, what, soulmate?”

She laughed back like she thought he was making a joke. “Throws _to_ them, not _at_ them. Banashur can tell whether it’s actually meant to be an attack, of course.” She sighed dreamily, and reached out to clasp one of his hands warmly between hers, “I don’t know of anyone alive who’s actually done it, not when the risk is so high if anything were to go wrong. If you’ve found someone in Kyrat who you thought was worth it, I’m very glad for you.”

“Though I’m afraid it’s lost you your place as Sabal’s golden boy,” a voice cut in dryly, and Ajay whirled around to see Amita leaning against the open window frame. “As soon as he heard it was a man that you threw your knife to he went into a sulk he hasn’t broken out of yet. Kyrat’s traditionalists are as terrible about that as they are about women.” Then she laughed slightly mockingly, glancing in the direction of Sabal’s home, “Though I would bet my place in the Golden Path that beneath that religious bigotry he’s going mad wondering why you chose a man who isn’t him.”

“Don’t blame that on the Gods,” Bhadra chided gently, “They’ve never tried to tell us who we should love.”

“They’ve also never said that you should be locked away like an idol, and we can see right there how much Sabal's type really care what’s actually been said,” Amita told her, not quite as sharply as she would with anyone else. Then she turned her attention back to Ajay, “So, do you _feel_ as if your soul was bound this man you’ve found?” but she didn’t even give him a chance to say, disturbingly, yes before her eyes slid back to Bhadra clearly just assuming he’d say no. “See, nothing but another story they tell us that does nothing for anyone, except letting Ajay be alienated by a supposed ally for the sake a pretty gesture.”

There was a smile on her face at odds with the harshness of her words, her eyes bright with a fiendish delight that told Ajay that even as she mouthed her scorn about their prejudice she was absolutely _delighted_ that he’d done something that would drive a wedge between him and Sabal’s faction.

* * *

He didn’t stay in Banapur long, fleeing to the solitude (as long as he avoided the tent out back) of his father’s homestead to think.

When he’d first met Pagan Ajay had thought his displays of affection were just some mad act, that he’d turn on Ajay just as quickly as he had on Darpan or on his guard if he made a single wrong mood. Even as he seemed to hold no serious ill-will during his jovially rambling calls Ajay couldn’t forget that he also did nothing to stop his soldiers from going after him. He was a ruthless dictator, how could Ajay think that he’d really feel anything about him other than maybe amusement at toying with him?

How could he think that when they were entirely separate anyway.

But he remembered now that burst of joy when Pagan realized what he’d done— he’d been king of Kyrat for decades, of could he’d be aware of the traditions that Ajay had never heard of. He remembered that terror far beyond his own when he’d almost fallen. 

He remembered how Pagan had looked down at him even as Ajay’d fingered his gun in the arena, not trying to dodge or hide. And act of ultimate trust, Bhadra had called it, trust to stand and wait as Ajay decided on his own to switch to a weapon that he didn’t expect to do him any harm.

As Ajay looked at the man who was supposedly his greatest enemy and decided, if he laid it out honestly to himself, that he preferred the world with him in it. Decided, even he didn’t actually think of it that way in the moment, to put Pagan's life above every friend he’d made in Kyrat, every ally who’d fought by his side, because not one of them (except, maybe, Bhadra; at least he certainly hoped that even Pagan might draw a line before murdering a little girl) could really be safe as long as he lived.

So baffling though it was on both sides it seemed that Pagan really did care about him in his own impossible to read way. And he really did have some warm feelings he didn’t really want to examine in greater detail than that towards Pagan. And those things combined to leave their souls accidentally tangled together in a way that sounded like fairytale nonsense except for how all the time he was thinking the whole mess over he could feel a creeping sense of concern mixed up with more murderous impulses which felt more protective than rage-filled aimed his way at his own baffled distress that was finally slowly fading into acceptance.

What they hell did he do with that?

* * *

Give the organizers at Shanath Arena a three-day notice of the next time he planned to fight turned out to be the first step. Usually he always just turned up right as the fights started for an evening and signed up to join, not wanting to give his enemies advance notice of where he was going to be at a certain time, but Yuma was the only serious danger beside Pagan himself left and Ajay would just have to trust that Pagan would keep her away when the word got out.

Either that or go into the night just assuming he’d end up killing Pagan’s sister in front of him if she crashed the arena and hope it wouldn’t screw up the rest of the night _too_ badly.

He could tell, unless he was being too egotistical, the moment that Pagan heard the news and must have realized that it could only be him that Ajay was trying to draw in. There was a burst of what could only be called hope in his chest out of nowhere, a feeling that he hadn’t felt in either of them before then.

When the night came he told himself the nerves he felt fluttering in his stomach were just over worrying about what sort of bullshit he might have called down on himself by giving the arena a chance to really prepare for having him down in the ring. That it didn’t mean anything in particular that he could feel an echo of them in his chest.

But he couldn’t try to wave away what he felt the _instant_ Pagan must have seen him enter the arena; a hint of worry but mostly excitement. Joy.

And, unmistakably, a burst of desire when Ajay drew his kukri and fell into a fighting stance, that only grew as he sliced into the first enemy to rush him.

Ajay remembered the story Pagan had told him once about the old body double who’d gone mad from the rush of pretending to be him. He couldn’t imagine that that rush could even begin to compare to how it felt to have the intense force of the real Pagan’s focus entirely on you. 

He didn’t think it would even be possible not to respond to it, to revel in such incredible regard. His moves grew flashier, his blows harder, bloodier, feeling Pagan’s want grow and his own compulsion to see how how much further he could push it upwards become stronger still in response. The fight itself became distant, unimportant to Pagan’s reaction to it, the bond between them so much stronger now that he was so close. He didn’t _need_ to focus on the arena, not when he had the quick pulses of Pagan’s worry to warn him when an enemy got too close to him in his blind spots. He only found the tiniest sense of clarity in the calm between rounds, but even then he spent the time he’d usually use to scramble into fresh cover instead staring into the crowd at Pagan, his breath coming in pants from more than just the exertion of the fights.

At least Pagan looked wide-eyed himself at the feedback loop they’d unexpectedly found themselves caught in.

Ajay was hardly even aware of the last battle ending, still ready for the next attack even as the crowd roared over his latest victory. Then he realized that Pagan was moving, pushing through the crowd as if it were nothing then gracefully leaping down into the ring. He must have been planning to do that from the beginning, Ajay realized on some level that was still capable of coherent thought, he’d chosen to watch in one of the areas low enough that he could do that without breaking his legs.

He backed up as Pagan approached, not fearing at all that Pagan would read it as a sign of rejection when he could feel Ajay’s heart for himself, would know how it welcomed him even as he tried to get them away from prying eyes into the exit corridors behind them. There’d be gossip enough as it is, he could hear the loud chatter of ‘It’s him, it’s him!’ from the crowd above, he didn’t need them to see however badly he’d snap when Pagan was actually close enough to touch.

Even then he barely made it through one of the doors in time, Pagan moving faster to reach him than Ajay to bear to move away from him. There was something flashing between Pagan’s fingers that Ajay only recognized as the knife that had begun everything right before it was suddenly beneath his chin, the flat of the blade delicately pressing his chin upwards until he met Pagan’s wide-blown eyes. He was panting as heavily as Ajay was, but managed to sound almost calm as he said, “You seem to have lost something, my dear boy,” and let the knife drop.

Ajay’s hand closed around it as it fell without looking, somehow managing to catch the handle safely regardless. Maybe it wasn’t thrown, but it was still caught. He managed to wretch his eyes away from Pagan’s just long enough to glance down at it, then shake his head slightly. “No,” he said, his own voice decidedly shakier but certainty in his tone, “I’m pretty sure I gave that to you.” Then he tossed it lightly back, wondering just what Banashur would make of this cycle of knife passing, if they were tying themselves tighter and tighter.

He could feel Pagan’s struggle, feel how desperately he was trying not to give into the fire that had sparked up between them as Ajay fought until he was _sure_ that was what Ajay himself wanted and not just Ajay getting caught up in his own lust. Felt him recognizing how that struggle only made Ajay want him more, want him for being decent enough in spite of all the many ways in which he was terrible to care about that. The calm was slipping as he said, “You must know by now what you’ve done, no matter how ignorant you are of the traditions here. That this isn’t… that you’re not…” the precision he prided himself on seemed to slip away as he tried to find a way to phrase what what he meant.

Ajay decided not to give him the time, yanking him forward and pressing their bodies together to Pagan couldn’t possibly miss how hard he already was, or do anything to hide how turned on he was in return. “Know that I had to fight an entire arena battle with the hard-on to end all hard-ons because the pervert in row one was getting off on it and pumping that straight into my head instead of because I’d suddenly gained a fetish for prisoners? Yeah, I know what’s going on. And that you’d better be ready to take care of what you caused.”

And then he could feel Pagan giving in, easily now that he was given even the tiniest reassurance that Ajay was fine with what was happening between them. "When I die your mother is going to kill me a second time for this," he murmured, but didn't fight as Ajay pulled him in and pressed their lips together at last.

**Author's Note:**

> [The story of Pagan's first body double](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiDiMk_Pdcc) for anyone who missed that conversation.


End file.
